I love minimalism but this feels maybe a bit uninspired, both visually and musically. I when people say this but it really feel look like a 64k intro. I think there could've been a lot more done with this. But for what it is, it's not bad.

enjoyed the relaxing visuals a lot. nice colours and well-balanced effects.
the tune...well... it's not bad. but a bit too simple. some light variations in the main melody wouldn't have hurt. don't mistake minimalism for emptiness.

the thing with slow paced prods in democompos is that they almost never hit the party mood. while i kinda liked the feel of it on the bigscreen (and of course the nice, calm music by gargaj) i couldnt help but wish for the next prod with a little more UNZ and energy.
now, 2 days later, suffering from PPD and other emotional stuff i rewatch it and am totally carried away.
this IS art. <3

<3 that track by Gargaj. Ending scene is great too! Rest is slightly too slow for me.

@xcom: what's with your video? the video in top link has 1080p, the one you linked is only 720p and seems to stutter in some places. Is there a reason for that? Maybe check the links first before posting?

Well that's different and it makes you actually feel something and sort of analyze urself from 3rd perspective what is happening. And this is good. The best demos don't aim to serve you a prechewed story but let you be the story. Virta uses very uncomplex building blocks to present you this experience.

A real success. Gargaj's best track and beautiful little particles combined with suggested geometry and mature pacing. The intro scene reminds me of an art installation where fluorescent lamps were set standing straight on a field just under big power lines.

Maybe my best demo. I spent ages, ages, ages tweaking and tuning all the little things in it. I got the track and didn't show it to Gargaj (who's a perfectionist) until very late in the process, fearing his reaction, and I remember how palpable my relief was when he loved it.

This is, despite it being abstract, also one of my most personal demos in a way. A relationship of almost six years was coming to an end while writing this and in the end it did come to that. When we visited Evoke together in 2011 we weren't a couple anymore and I think that some of that bittersweet sentiment is visible in this demo. I coded this mostly at work outside office hours, because I didn't have a proper PC at home at that time. I even did it during my summer holiday, ie. sneaked in in the evening after people had left and disappearing before dawn.

Some individual tidbits:

The demo was almost called Distance, but then I decided to go with a Finnish name. Virta means flow or stream, and I think that's very appropriate for the mood.,

The logo part was one of the few moments when I gave creative control away to Prowler, because he was adamant about it. I'm glad I did, it looks magnificent and the logo itself is stunning.

The part with the vertical lines after the logo was inspired by title graphics in a documentary by Joy Division that I saw at a festival. You can see it here if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1qQsHGHi8w. It's a great as a documentary as well.

The part with the circles is based on a poster I saw in Budapest while attending Function 2010. It's very static and I tried giving it more motion, but nothing worked.

The particles in a vector field is one of my favorite effects of what I've done and it was and inspired by Peon's demo Movement. I guess almost all of Virta has that kind of vibe to it. Go check it out, it's great.

The falling particles thing came from a dream. I love how the glow filter bugs around 3:30 and it seems like there's light falling.

The last scene was totally an accident and made in a day. The shape looks great though.

Now, watching this, I wonder if I should get back to coding demos. If only there was time...

A lot of making this is still very vivid in my head. I don't quite remember what spurred me to make the track technically, I know I was in a bad headspace at the time (I think it was still the time when I wrote most of my music at work because I didn't have a home PC) and I guess I just wanted to express it, so I made it and I never really planned to show it to anyone. Fun fact: the little glitchy twerps in the music are actually from our (commercial) game's executable put through a little script I called "MP3izer" which takes any binary data and wraps it into valid MP3 frame headers so it looks like a valid MP3 file and the result (only Winamp plays it back I think) are these little isolated compression artifacts - I just liked the idea of the otherwise smooth track broken up by these atonal little "errors".

I think the year before this got released (2010) I remember hanging out with Martti at Breakpoint and for some reason I mentioned I have an ambient / minimal techno track lying around and his eyes just lit up. I sent it to him after the party, but then I guess we just couldn't approach the demo the right way for about a year - our previous collaboration was a disaster and I think that kinda still weighed in on our minds.

I remember getting the preview for this in 2011 pretty much out of the blue (re-reading the emails from this period is heartwarming) and I just thought it aligned to the music so well, and the last effect was amazing, so I thought, well, this could be really good. The next 2 weeks or so were spent with putting poor Martti through the wringer, because I thought there was a lot of room for improvement in direction: the preview version had no crossfades (just fade in/out) and there was a credits sequence at the start, but I insisted that anything that breaks the flow of the demo has to go.

I was a bit scared of the reception for this, because it's not a "party" demo, but I think the relative success of this has been inspiring when it comes to making "non-crowd-pleaser" material.

The two weeks through the wringer did me and the demo a world of good. I've always been lazy about doing polishing properly, but after that experience I've tried to do it properly (or at least felt bad about the lack of polish :))

I really like this demo. Such a peaceful mood and beautiful particles. Music and visuals work perfectly together. Thought I thumbed it already but apparently not so here is the late thumb. Also was very cool to read the story of the moods and situations of how it was made. It is really nice to see the human side behind the productions, demo making is such a weird combination of technical and artwork. It is nice for me to see the emotion and thoughts that other people have and it makes me feel ok to know that other demo makers that I look up to are not just machines and they also work hard to make something that other people might enjoy. It can be challenging putting your personal work out in the world to be judged, at the same time dealing with the realities of life and the real world around you.